About Leslie

Leslie is obsessed with knitting, and when possible, perfection in her knitting. All stripey socks must match exactly and all lace must be blocked severely. She has major love for all of her viewers/readers and hopes to keep blogging and podcasting for years to come.

I wasn’t sure where to leave my question so here goes nothing. I know Leslie has said in the past that she has only been knitting for 3 years or so what inspired you to start spinning? Also, I was curious as to know how you got started with your production, what made you start it and hard long does it take to put it up online? Continue all the great work I’m an avid follower.

I can answer the spinning part! My mom has spun since 1980. She is truly a spinner/weaver more than a knitter. I swore for years that I would never learn to spin, but in February of 2007, she convinced me to give it a try. I went to rent a wheel ( because I didn’t want to use one of the 3 we had in the house at the time) and Leslie came along to the to yarn shop. Being the competitive person she is, once I started she had to start as well.
We got started on the wedcast because we knew that their were not a huge ton of knitting or spinning videocasts and we thought it would be fun! It is a ton of work (esp. for Leslie because she does the tech part). It usually takes me an hour or so to do shownotes (which reminds me, I need to do that!). I hope that answers some of your questions! Thank you so much for watching and commenting! It’s really the awesome comments and reviews that makes us continue to record (we were really nervous at first that we would just have my mom watch us)

Great episode! Would you be interested in getting some preemie quilts to donate? I have been itching to get my sewing machine out and can whip up some preemie quilts over the next couple of week and would love to send them to you for the babies.

@rocktheknits – I emailed you this info but thought I’d post it here in case others were curious.

It looks like Laura already answered a lot of this on the site (in the comment after yours), but I will also give my two cents:

For spinning, it just seemed like the next thing we needed to learn. We’d done knitting, I’ve done crochet, so why not spin? We had a LYS that would rent wheels, and we did that for a month or two, and after that we were hooked! It was another few months before I purchased a wheel, and I still don’t spin as much as I’d like, but I do enjoy it!

As for the show – neither Laura or I were avid podcast listeners, though we did have a few that we liked. My friend Jackie, who I’ve known for 5+ years, started an audio podcast about a year ago, and after initially resisting, I started listening to hers every week. It was so nice to be able to listen and feel like she was right there in the room with me, chatting me up! I’d never really entertained the idea of an audio podcast because I don’t like my voice, but after Laura showed me Carin’s video podcast, I got excited – I could handle a video one! I love that Laura and I can do this, because it’s really all off the cuff, no rehearsal, just us chatting about what we’re doing and what’s going on.

As for production – it has evolved over time. We started with a crappy little webcam, then got a slightly better webcam, and finally, due to audio and video demands on my little dinky laptop, we switched to a flip cam (small digital video camera). We did have some growing pains, and honestly were prepared for the whole thing to flop and have no one watch/care, but surprisingly people seem to enjoy watching us chatter on endlessly.

just “found” you all after enjoying “Round the Twist” so much — esp. love all the “show and tell” on latest episode. TELL Kathy to update her Ravelry projects — I poked around and am pretty sure I found her, but she has ahem only one project shown! Want to see those shawls LOL

Anyway, what fun you all look like you are having, so I guess I’d better start at the beginning now thanks for great show notes, too!
Maryjo